The incident in the eastern state of Odisha comes 10 months after police fired on protesters protesting against the Vedanta copper smelter in southern Tamil Nadu, killing 13 people.
“ Two people died - one of our Odisha industrial safety officers and the other from the public , Senior Police Officer Gupteswar Bhoi told Reuters.
Protester Maheshwar Pati told Reuters that state security officials attacked people who did not provoke them with sticks. According to him, the demonstrators included residents of three neighboring villages who had surrendered land to Vedanta and hoped to find work in the company.
Vedanta says 85 percent of the 3,000 employees at the Lanjigarh plant come from Odisha.
Ajay Dixit, chief executive of Vedanta's aluminum business, told Reuters that protesters had stopped production by shutting off bauxite-supplying rail lines and setting fire to the entrance gates and other parts of the premises.
Dixit said the deceased protester was a worker working for one of Vedanta's contractors.
The protests, in which more than a hundred people participated, were also prompted by the layoff of a local Vedanta employee, a senior police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Dixit commented that the employee was not fired and voluntarily resigned after the company began investigating him.
